In the gritty Ecuadorian city of Durán — a place overrun by drugs and rival criminal factions — Police Captain Jean Carlos Bustamante knows exactly what he is up against. It is not just the killers who dismember their rivals, but also the enemy within his own ranks.
“We have many, many bad people inside our unit, inside the state, inside politics,” he says bluntly. “We have many, many guys that are corrupt. They are in the pay of the gangs.”
The only officers he can truly trust, he insists, are the ones standing right beside him — members of his hand-picked team. At 34, Captain Bustamante is the oldest among them and moves with the precision of the special forces officer he once was.
A Small Victory in a War of Attrition
As the sun sets, he leads his team into a hardscrabble neighbourhood where windows are sealed behind metal grills and lips are sealed by fear. This is the heart of gangland, controlled by a group called Los Aguilas (Spanish for The Eagles). When I ask what happens if local people speak out against the gangs, the captain’s reply is chilling: “They kill them. So that’s why they never say nothing.”
He is heading for an abandoned house where he believes weapons have been hidden — gunmen, he explains, rarely keep their guns at home. His team lines up, hugging the wall, heavily armed and tightly packed. A battering ram gets them through the door. Inside, they find two handguns — one rusty, but the other ready to be fired — along with ammunition for an assault rifle.
The captain is satisfied with the result. “The first reason is because we are safe,” he says. “The second is that there are two guns less for the gangs.” But this is a small victory in a war of attrition. He admits the gangs have “many weapons and much more money than the state.”
Personal Sacrifice and Family Fear
He knows the risks only too well — having lost three close friends in the fight against the gangs. He says he lost his fear “years ago”, but his parents have not. “My Mum says ‘be careful, maybe you can die there’,” he tells me. “My Dad calls all the time and asks ‘my son, are you good? Tell me that you are good.'”
How Ecuador Became a Killing Ground
A line can be traced — in dollars and in broken lives — from the backstreets of Durán to the hotspots of London and other capital cities. Around 70% of the cocaine reaching Europe and the United States is funnelled out of Ecuador, according to President Daniel Noboa.
How did it come to this? The drug pours in from neighbouring Colombia and Peru — the world’s two biggest producers. Powerful home-grown gangs, with links to Mexican cartels and Albanian mafia groups, help smuggle the cocaine onwards, taking advantage of Ecuador’s weak border controls, underfunded security forces, and long Pacific coastline.
What was once a peaceful tourist haven in South America has — in under a decade — become a killing ground. Last year, the murder rate was among the highest in the world, with more than 9,200 people killed, according to Ecuador’s interior ministry.
The Iron Fist That Backfired
That bloodshed has come despite an iron-fisted crackdown by President Noboa over the past two years. Critics say it has backfired: top crime bosses have been arrested, causing the gangs to fracture — but also to multiply. Many here believe the war against the gangs will never be won.
Yet Captain Bustamante keeps fighting. During another operation, he is lying in wait, getting a bird’s-eye view of the back alleys from a drone. He spots three figures moving at the edge of a playground — “micro-traffickers”, caught in the act, he says. They are at the bottom of the drug chain, selling locally in minute amounts, not kilos.
Within minutes, he and his team track the suspects to their door. The battering ram is out again, and soon they are inside a kitchen where a middle-aged woman protests and a young girl bursts into tears. The police move from room to room by torchlight — there is no power — opening wardrobes and lifting mattresses. Upstairs, they find a hiding place behind a window. A young suspect emerges and is detained. Two others are handcuffed in another room.
Nearby, the captain finds tiny paper packets of “H” stashed in a flowerpot — a highly addictive mix containing small amounts of heroin, sold by neighbourhood dealers for $1.00 (£0.75) per packet. One suspect is charged and, if convicted, could face five years in jail. Prosecutors release the other two.
A Justice System for Sale
Senior officers say that happens a lot. They blame corruption in the justice system and the prosecutor’s office. “We imprison them [gang members] and they release them,” says Colonel Santiago Gavilanes, deputy commander of Durán police. “We know because when we carry out raids, we recapture them. Some of those who are released kill people and leave orphans behind.”
He tells us the gangs have money to “buy laws, judges, and politicians”.
We get a firsthand example of that buying power from another police officer, in a different location. For his safety, we cannot reveal his name or where he is based. He told us he was contacted twice by text and offered a massive bribe — “enough money to retire on”. He turned it down. Someone — a colleague, perhaps — had informed the gang exactly where he worked and what he did. “You never know who is watching,” he said.
We heard that a lot during a week in Durán and the surrounding areas.
Signs of Progress, But No End in Sight
Back at the playground, it is the end of another long day in body armour, but Captain Bustamante says he has to keep going. “Maybe, I am a little tired,” he admits, “but it’s my work. I believe we can win this war. We have to do it.”
As we speak, one of the main gang bosses in the area has been spotted nearby. “We know he controls the dealers,” says the captain, “but we have no leads or evidence, so we can’t arrest him.”
But police here insist they are having an impact. The murder rate in Durán is down by half in the first six months of this year, they say. There are other indications of progress: streets are no longer deserted after 19:00 local time, and bodies are no longer found beheaded or dismembered — a practice that used to be common.
“We have managed to contain the gangs,” says Colonel Gavilanes. “Getting complete control is going to be a medium-term process.”
Meeting the Enemy
Elsewhere, the criminals are containing the police. Through a contact, we arranged to meet a local gang on their home turf, about an hour’s drive from the city. Their leader — whom we are calling Jonathan — told me he had four officers on his payroll. “Whenever they’re going to do an operation, they call me,” he said. “They tell me to hide things, and to get out of here. When they arrive, they find nothing.” That early warning system costs him about $1,500 (£1,100) to $2,000 (£1,500) a month.
At 37, Jonathan is just a few years older than Captain Bustamante, but he is across enemy lines. He says he joined a gang at 18 to put food on the table. He and his men — and boys — strolled through the rough-hewn streets in broad daylight, brandishing weapons including a semi-automatic rifle and a pistol. The youngest gang member we saw was a lean 17-year-old, wearing a bulletproof vest and flip-flops. All covered their faces.
Jonathan answered our questions inside a narrow room in a breeze-block house, with his lieutenants crowding in. Most of the space was taken up by a bed. He admitted to being a drug pusher and a killer. “How many lives have you taken?” I asked. “Well, until now about eight, I think. I don’t remember well,” he replied, with a handgun in his lap, pointing in my direction.
Jonathan claimed his gang did not kill innocent people — just a rival criminal group trying to replace them. “They want to force their way in here,” he said, “they come killing people, and we respond. The main thing for us now is to eliminate the other gang.”
Children Caught in the Crossfire
As we spoke, local people gathered near the doorway, children among them. Human rights workers in Ecuador told us boys can be recruited into gang life by the age of 12. Three years later, they can be hitmen.
Jonathan makes no apologies for putting guns in the hands of teenagers or selling cocaine in the neighbourhood he claims to protect. He insists the drug trade cannot be rooted out. “I think it’s an issue that will never end,” he says. “If they shut us down, another one [gang] will come along, and if they shut that one down, there will be another.”
He expects to die as he has lived — by the gun. “Death is paid by death,” he said. “But if they come to kill me, I won’t make it easy for them.”
A Night of Revenge
Two nights later, back in Durán, we saw how gangs settle scores. The body of a man was visible under flashing police lights, lying where he fell beside a motorbike. Bullet casings were still on the ground. Neighbours stood looking on, mostly in silence. A man and woman held each other and wept — relatives of the dead man.
Police suspected a revenge attack — one gang against another. Forensic teams lifted the body onto a stretcher and into the back of a refrigerated van: violent death, on repeat. Another corpse was already inside.
A witness was willing to speak — but not to be named. “He already had a bullet in his back,” he told us. “As he fell, they finished him off with a shot to the head. He was shot six times by two men on a motorbike.”
“We are used to this now because it happens every day,” he said. “You might just step outside and catch a stray bullet. You can’t even go out or talk to friends or family because someone could shoot you.”
He does not expect the president’s fight against the gangs to deliver any change. “Criminals are like ghosts,” he said, in a low voice. “They pop up wherever they please.”
Then he melted away into the warm night air. You never know who is watching.
